The Use Or Intent Of Information Does Not Determine Its QualityOver at Sophies Ladder, Jeff says

"Reliability, on the other hand, I take to mean “can be dependably used” and so, obviously, reliability relates to the purposes intended."

Reliability is not an IDQ dimension, however it clearly is important. But the use of the information does not determine its quality. Poor quality data can be used to make a living with. Its called Fraud. Information can be presented in such a way as to be persuasive whether it accurately represents real world states or not.

Blaming The VictimIs the Bible reliable – not as a history or science book – but as a conveyor of information regarding the transcendental, spiritual realm? How can one ever know? There is nothing to compare it to, nothing to triangulate (aka cross-check) it with. That is really the point of all my IDQ articles. Using the information in the Bible, the Christian remains agnostic about God whether they realize it or not. For example Jeff brings up Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus.

“How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” he asks. Jesus chastises him for not knowing any better than to be so literal. “You’re a master of Israel and you don’t know these things?”

This is completely ambiguous and, additionally, lacks nurturing. Can anyone be blamed if they don't understand something that is presented ambiguously? Generally, teachers are held accountable if the students don't comprehend the information. In a small percentage of cases, the student has some individual difficulty that prevents them from grasping the information whether its ambiguous or not. When that is the case, the student is not chastised. In all cases, principle dictates that more attention is given to the student, until the student can comprehend the information. From the text it doesn't seem likely that Nicodemus was being deliberately difficult, it seems that the material was exceptionally difficult for Nicodemus, and, as we can see, it is of poor quality because it demonstrates the IDQ flaws of Incomplete Representation and Ambiguous Representation. Simply stated, Jesus did not explain himself clearly. Simply stated Nicodemus is being blamed for not understanding. Is the material impossible to convey in words? Considering how common the phrase "Born Again" is, when clearly explained, it can be "understood" by some. But Jeff says

In the case of the Bible, it is likely that it’s not possible to speak plainly, given the subject matter.

If God Engineered Us, And If We Don't Get It, It's Not Our FaultAlright, I'll stipulate that "it is not possible to speak plainly given the subject matter" for the sake of argument and I'll point out that if the material necessary to be comprehended to obtain salvation is too complicated for our minds, then, since God supposedly engineered us, he is solely responsible. But he has another option. Being all powerful and the creator of all things gives him the option of implanting the knowledge directly in the brain. There's no excuse for the material to be unobtainable, incomprehensible unless it was of poor quality.

Getting Burned is All You Need To Know About FireAt this point Jeff tries to build the case that

There is something very small about a concept if it can be contained in words alone.

additionally he goes off down a slippery slope. He asks

Why do we shout for joy or turn to music to express ourselves, if words alone can suffice?

but he seems to ignore the fact that plenty of understanding goes on without shouting for joy or turning to music. The theory of General Relativity and String Theory can be explained in words alone, it takes a long time, and a lot of words, but it can be done. I know because I understand them and can explain them. I can also explain how schizophrenia is produced by a genetic mutation, and how human behavior is affected by that. I can also explain the History of the concept of the Soul starting with Orpheus. In my opinion someone who says that a thing is indescribable doesn't understand it well enough to talk about it.

Data AbstractionJeff goes on to reference John 21:25 where Jesus says that the world cannot contain the books necessary to express the Logos. That's fine, but using data abstraction, I don't need to know how fire works or how my computer works, or how the elements in my steak marinade combine for me to benefit from them. Likewise I didn't need to know how the Logos worked for more than thirty five years as a Christian to appreciate it. When I realized that the Jihadists were right when they said that it looked like their prayers were answered and Allah guided those planes into the towers and that, to me, it looked like God was ignoring the prayers of those people jumping out of the towers I decided to stop using a double standard for my religion. I started to "cross-check" Christianity.

Circular Reasoning And Shooting Yourself In The FootJeff's reasoning is circular. There is nothing to Triangulate his data except with such things as the Bible, his personal experience, the personal experience of other Christians, the personal experience of non-christians and Science. Unfortunately the more data we accumulate to triangulate with, the weaker Jeffs case gets. While Jeff continues to minimize the importance of the text of the Bible and emphasize the importance of the inner dwelling of the Spirit, he keeps using Biblical texts to support his case. The problem is that he is weakening his own case by minimizing the information in the Bible.

Christians Must Be Agnostic About The Things They Do Not Agree OnUnless Christianity can value each others information equally, they must remain agnostic on the topics they do not agree on. The topics they do not agree on get to the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Since that is the case, Christians must necessarily be agnostic about a large percentage of the things they think they know. They must be Agnostic.

Christianity is a disorganized mess and it has all the symptoms of an organization that needs their data cleaned up using the principles of IDQ.But I think that would be its undoing, and I think that Christians know that intuitively, and that the biological algorithms for comfort and self-preservation kick in to preclude them from committing to the inference from the Data.

With help from John, Prup, an Ed Babinski article, and Sconnor, here are a list of some disputed topics within Christianity. And following that, I listed the staggering number of Christian Denominations.

- Evolution or creationism?- Being Born Again? - Trinity or no?- Arianism- The disputes that drove the creation of Protestants.- Denominations of Protestants- Denominations of Catholics- War between Catholics and protestants- Holy Spirit male or female?- Holy Spirit is a person or not?- Salvation, faith or works- Baptism- Infant Baptism- Hell is real and fiery or not?- Purgatory- Snake handling- Once saved always saved?- Where do Suicides go?- Speaking in tongues- Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit- New covenant theology- The 'two natures' in Christ.- The Ordination of Women- The attitude towards gays- The various parts of the Bible that seem to be later additions, such as the 'story of the woman taken in adultery' and the 'Great Commission' that ends Matthew, etc.- The Rapture- Slavery- Biblical inerrancy- Christendom- Papal Infallibility- Double Predestination- Just War Theory- Penal Substitution- God as a Male- Sin- Unforgivable Sin- Second coming has already happened- The point in time that the holy spirit indwells and fills you- Gifts of the spirit given to everyone or different people at different times- 'pre-Nicean' controversies

No. The only snakes You need to handle is the passions eating us alive.

Once saved always saved?

Salvation is a process that may be aborted (unfortunately).

Speaking in tongues

The apostolic preaching and even presence was crowned by God with many miracles (Acts 19:12), but their presence is just that: a gift from God, and not a necessary sine qua non aspect of the inner working of the Holy Spirit.

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

The heardening of the heart. When you sin almost without temptation, from yourself, like the devil did from the beginning.

The 'two natures' in Christ

Yes.

The Ordination of Women

No. (They can't be Priests or Bishops). Women's ordination betrays a Nestorian understanding of who Christ is, and/or even a Modalistic/Sabelian understanding of the Trinity.

I am preparing a response to your IDQ, I'll let you know when it is up.

To this particular post. The same can be said for atheism. If agreement is a requirement for theistic solutions regarding reality then surely that same principle must be applied to the atheists, material of philosophical. For example Atheism cannot agree on who Jesus Christ was, myth, legend, real person, fraud, liar...etc.

For more see my post on the matter... http://christianityversusatheism.blogspot.com/2008/12/challenge-to-all-atheists-jesus-who.html

In my limited discussions with atheists I have also found many disagreements on morals, the nature of the origin of the universe, abortion, human rights..etc.

I do not think this is a religious specific problem with IDQ, rather, I think this is a mark of humanity.

Reliability is not an IDQ dimension, however it clearly is important. But the use of the information does not determine its quality. Poor quality data can be used to make a living with. Its called Fraud. Information can be presented in such a way as to be persuasive whether it accurately represents real world states or not.

I assume that he's making this argument because he's trying to answer my argument that his model (Information Data Quality, aka IDQ) Is wrongly applied. He thinks it's a simplistic issue of just getting some facts wrong. It's just as simple as the ancient Hebrews were idiots and got everything wrong, so the Bible is not true and that's all we need to know. IF that were the case we don't his big gimmicky IDQ thing. All we need do is show a few facts out of place. Atheists are never content to just state the obvious, or their views (whichever come first) and let it go at that. They have to treat the Bible into little pieces. That's not good enough so they have grind it into dust. That's not good enough so they have to burn the dust. Still not good enough so they have to throw the ashes into the wind. Not good enough so they have to curse the wind which carries the ashes.

The point is not that the way people mean to use the information is key to it's truth content. The point is that it's about what kind of information we should expect from it. If no one ever arrived at a transformational state by reading the bible then we could say truly the Bible is false. But that's the only case in which we can say that, because it is just not made to supply another kind of information. I fear the atheists don't understand this, and can't understand it, and that they can only think in terms factual correctness in scientific matters. Ironically the people who choose cultural relativism as their guide cannot understand cultural differences.

1. Being born again -- you don't have to, or you have to?2. Evolution or creationism?

To all christians: When christianity has one unified, unequivocal message, that all christians agree on and you can substantiate what you say, then you come on back and let me know -- you should probably be back in around -- never.

When reading the bible, people are free to rationalize and interpret it (making it mean whatever they want it to mean), which gets us the perverted ideas, beliefs and agendas of the 34,000 different christian groups, in the world, and used to push any and every agenda under the sun, which renders any notion of truth, obsolete. Your god is nothing but a human construct -- a figment of your imagination, a definition, based on your myopic, interpretation of the bible and flights of fancy.

Hi JL,The point is not that the Bible gives us factual knowlege, it's that it bestows grace upon the reader.thats great JL. So since its a fact, how can i confirm it?

I assume that he's making this argument because he's trying to answer my argument that his model (Information Data Quality, aka IDQ) Is wrongly applied.This had nothing to do with you, its all Jeff, I'm working on my reply to you. Its in my googledocs.

JL, you are demonstrating your self-referential, self-centered reasoning schemes, and undermining your own credibility because you seem to be just scanning through the information and popping off whatever comes to mind. Thats fine, but don't expect me to take you seriously. Buddy, the world doesn't revolve around you. I know you think you have the edge because of your "inner knowing", but some of us don't buy it.

I notice that your main strategies seem to be misrepresentation, minimization, loaded language and absolutes. In a word "Rhetoric". That may work with an audience but since I study argumentation, you may want to tighten up your strategy to include some facts and reasoning from inference, some real world examples, some cross-checking, tempering your absolutes with words like "some" and "i think", and maybe even analyzing what my arguments depend on and DEMONSTRATE or DESCRIBE the flaw in the methodology instead of just saying its wrong and throwing words around like "simplistic", "idiots", "never", "gimmicky", making categorical ad hominem characterizations about atheists, and using unsubstantiated and undefined claims and terms such as "transformational state".

You sure are bitter for being a christian. Where's that peace that passes understanding, that inner joy? Aren't christians and the indwelling of the holy spirit evidenced by its fruit? You sure aren't very sweet these days.

Jeeze JL,I just glanced through your new article and saw thisThis is clearly a counter to my articleon the cadre blog taking him to task for his gimmicky approach.

get over yourself!This is not about you, it is an argument formulated since before I joined DC, but never had the tools demonstrate. I was dealing with Jeffs article over the course of three or so rebuttals. Your arguments are similar? Why imagine that! You shouldn't be surprised if you both have this "inner knowing". You should have expected it!

And if "inner knowing" is bunk, then at least we have confirmation of the happy fact that Jeff has a good brain which does intuitive inference in the background (subconsciously if you will) and he came up with one of a few obvious counter strategies.

I was going to do you both at the same time (not in a kinky way of course) but when I saw what a long diatribe you'd produced I decided to read it later and work on Jeff. In fact, after reading yours carefully, I'd say that Jeffs article is more coherent than yours which is not what I would expect from someone who claims to do this for a living.

My argument has always been "the bible is folklore" which means that now I have to prove it.what are some characteristics of folklore? Typologies for one and lack of agreement with real world states for another.

If you really do study the history of ideas, then you know when the concept of the soul first popped up, and it wasn't in palestine.

or didn't you know that? Its folklore buddy, and it can be traced back to the cult of orpheus. That means its a pagan idea. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That article only has an outline done.

in fact, very little seems to be original in the Bible, most having precedent earlier in other cultures, but you should know this.

What does having precedent matter? Precedent means that its probably closer to the origin.

Why disregard precedent when it is such a sound principle in the real world? Some things are predictable by the layman only because of precedent. Then they can be confirmed by cross-checking (triangulation).

I'm drinking a nice warm Mocha Quad Venti of reality and I'll share with you if you'd like.

Hi Phil,if you want to say that atheists must be agnostic, I'm with ya pal. But just because I'll concede that I don't know if there is no god or not doesn't mean that it is likely that there is. I don't think there are aliens, bigfoot or the loch ness monster either, but I may be wrong. But If I have to make a decision that depends on having an opinion on them, I go with what I think is the most likely choice. They're bunk.

I try to avoid arguments from ignorance, and I try to avoid making decisions one way or the other using bad information.

I keep my job that way. I use probabilistic reasoning, and in my view, since the bible is such poor quality information about God, then I think all conclusions about topics in the bible are weak. And I point to the evidence at the end of my article to support that.

So If you want to say that bible is poor quality and you can't be sure of any of it, I'm with ya pal!

Lee, your reactions are childish here. you are responding out of anger and personal hurt.

Perhaps you are offended becasue I put down your use of the IDQ stuff and called it a gimmick. I apology if that hurt your feelings or offended you personally. I did not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with your reasoning abilities or your understanding of argument.

I think you are making a mistake, and thus a bad argument, by trying to apply that to the Bible. The one biggest failure of everyone on DC is their refusal to deal with Biblical criticism.

You should embrace that as the scientifically correct way to go about studying the bible, and come to know what textual critics have said.

Now, in terms of your writing of this piece, I think your writing is clear and well organized. I think your thinking is good, your use of logic is fine. you do make good arguments. We all make bad arguments at times. This is one of them for you.

I do take you seriously enough to respond to your stuff. I like your writing and I like thinking. Frankly I'm taken aback buy your overly emotional response.

your article http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009/01/lee-randolph-has-no-clothes.html aka "choosing the right model for understanding biblical inspiration"is full of it, literally.Really, "lee randolph has no clothes"?

I was trying to make a play the emporer's clothes. That was to spin off the idea that I think your use of IDQ is inappropriate and gimmicky. sorry but I do think that.

The thing is I was not hip to the fact that people getting emials of posts get the one's weather I change them or not. I put that up but I didn't leave it up. I took it down and changed the title very soon after becuase I realized it was offensive and overdone.

I didn't want to insult you, that's why I took it down. I didn't realize the horse was out of the barn already.

This is clearly a counter to my article on the cadre blog taking him to task for his gimmicky approach.

get over yourself!This is not about you, it is an argument formulated since before I joined DC, but never had the tools demonstrate.

O stop being so petulant. you are no such a wonderful great thinker it's not the end of the world if you get insulted. Even though I didn't' mean to do that.

you are ragging on my ego becuase your ego is hurt.

I was dealing with Jeffs article over the course of three or so rebuttals. Your arguments are similar? Why imagine that! You shouldn't be surprised if you both have this "inner knowing". You should have expected it!

I came to realize that and change my article to reflect it.

And if "inner knowing" is bunk, then at least we have confirmation of the happy fact that Jeff has a good brain which does intuitive inference in the background (subconsciously if you will) and he came up with one of a few obvious counter strategies.

I was going to do you both at the same time (not in a kinky way of course) but when I saw what a long diatribe you'd produced I decided to read it later and work on Jeff. In fact, after reading yours carefully, I'd say that Jeffs article is more coherent than yours which is not what I would expect from someone who claims to do this for a living.

Your nose is out of joint because you feel that I offended you. But I didn't mean to, that's why I changed the article. get over yourself.

My argument has always been "the bible is folklore" which means that now I have to prove it.what are some characteristics of folklore? Typologies for one and lack of agreement with real world states for another.

that is not the same as being unclear or badly communicated.

The bible contains folklore. I think we would both agree on that. Its' not totally folklore. but it contains quite a bit of it.

If you really do study the history of ideas, then you know when the concept of the soul first popped up, and it wasn't in palestine.

that is neither here nor there. But you are assuming again that if God is real the Bible is inproited then it would be perfect, it would be the only thing God would do and he wouldn't go near other culturs, which is contrary to what the bible says both about God and about itself.

The concept of the soul is not just one idea. It didn't jsut start in one place. the bible contains several uses of the word they are not all the same, but the major use is that it means life, over all life of the individual in relation to god; this is very different from the modern concept of soul which is more like ghost in the machine.

or didn't you know that? Its folklore buddy, and it can be traced back to the cult of orpheus. That means its a pagan idea. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That article only has an outline done.

that's a childish presuppossiton. saying that being folklore makes it pagan is silly:

(1) being folklore doesn't make it pagan, all cultures have folklore include Hebrwes, no monopoly there.

(2)so what if it is pagan? Abraham was a Pagan. Israel was founded by decedents of Abraham but also by Midianites who were also pagan.

(3) I never said it wasn't folklore, you see to think that's a bad thing, it's not.

(4) nothing wrong with folklore, it's mythological, meaning it speaks to the psyche with power of arch types. nothing wrong with that.

in fact, very little seems to be original in the Bible, most having precedent earlier in other cultures, but you should know this.

duh, there go those fundamentalist presups again. you really need to learn modern liberal theology.

You are assuming that there's some onus on any culture that's not Heberw, but that's absurdly naive because all cultures have background in prior cultures. Hebrew culture comes out of pagan culture.

Bible says God works in all Cultures (Acts 17:21-29

What does having precedent matter? Precedent means that its probably closer to the origin.

More bad exclusivisistic assumptions of the fundies again.

Why disregard precedent when it is such a sound principle in the real world? Some things are predictable by the layman only because of precedent. Then they can be confirmed by cross-checking (triangulation).

I don't really understand what you are trying to say. Tradition is not vanant from Western thought even in modern times. The use of the tradition is valid, but rquries a communicaty context in which to work.

In religious belief we have that context, because religion is something done in community and relative to community membership.

in philosophy for example, the tradition of Western philosophy as a conversation is important to understand.

I'm drinking a nice warm Mocha Quad Venti of reality and I'll share with you if you'd like.

HI Joe,first you say,Lee, your reactions are childish here. you are responding out of anger and personal hurt.

did you see what I wrote here:"I was going to do you both at the same time (not in a kinky way of course) but when I saw what a long diatribe you'd produced I decided to read it later and work on Jeff."

that sounds like a response out of anger and personal hurt, to you?

then you acknowledge that youtook it down and changed the title very soon after becuase I realized it was offensive and overdone.

so you are following in Jesus steps as in the case of nicodemus and blaming the victim. You can say and do whatever you want but if I act offended and point it out, I'm acting like I child.

Nice, spirit you got there Joe.

your "inner knowing" is broke.

you are ragging on my ego becuase your ego is hurt.really, you have that much influence over me?

Joe, you've been played.you took the bait hook line and sinker.;-)

But you are assuming again that if God is real the Bible is inproited then it would be perfect, it would be the only thing God would do and he wouldn't go near other culturs, which is contrary to what the bible says both about God and about itself.That is your misrepresentation of my position. I never said anything like that.

but since you bring it up,then if he did go near other cultures, then why don't they report anything close to the old testament. They only have typologies in common, not facts. If you want to try to use other cultures folklore to cross-check the accuracy of information in the bible good luck with that. I don't think you can even get a majority of christians to buy that.

what you don't seem to consider is, what is the value of the information in the bible? That should be the most valuable thing on the planet? Is it more valuable than the koran?I think you would say yes, so lets go with that.Is the Quality of information in the Koran better than the bible?Before you answer that, you better look over the ~20 IDQ dimensions, and see how to calculate the accuracy rating, and the believability rating. Believability is derived in part from accuracy.

What is the value of the information in the Bible?If all are supposed to believe in the yhwh God, and the Bible is the only "authorised" record we have of yhwh, and if a person goes to hell is a "loss" then we can say that at any given time the minimum value of the bible is represented by the number of people on the planet.

the US census count says that at the time of this writing the world population isWorld 6,755,420,53105:19 GMT (EST+5) Jan 22, 2009.

So now we have a measurment for the value of the information in the bible.

How valuable is the information from a daily airline flight safety inspection on a Jet starting its schedule?if we say it carries 300 people at the moment that the bibles value is measured at 6.75 billion people, then the air safety inspections minimum value is 300 people. At T0 the minimum value of the bible is 6.7 billion peopleand the safety inspection is 300 people.

No tell me which has more IDQ design flaws of - Incomplete representation- Ambiguous representation- Meaningless representation- Garbling by mapping to a meaningless state- Garbling by mapping to a wrong state

If you can't guess, the bible does.Don't you think that the bibles accuracy should reflect its value? I'm not talking about a Lee Randolph "should", I'm talking about a principle of logic "should"

I do, and I'm going to explore this more in the coming days.

Thats all I have time for, I'd love to have a coffee with you, and however offensive you get, you don't upset me joe so don't worry about it. I have a peace that passes understanding.;-)

oh yea,and I forgot to mention, that if the information in the bible is accurate,then since I've been saved once,I'm always saved.I have a free ticket to heaven. weeeee hooooo!Do they have coffee in heaven?;-)

J.L. Hinman"The point is not that the Bible gives us factual knowlege, it's that it bestows grace upon the reader"

Well Joe excuse me for being a bit blunt,but when i look at your style of posts mostly.Personally they dont seem to me to be that full or ooze a whole lot of this grace really.That is said to supposedly be bestowed on the reader of this book.

Is it just you have not read the bible enough?,or does this suggest what i already personally suspect! that the bible just doesnt honestly actually work that often like its supposed to really.

Not that i really expect such a fraudulent book to actually work ,but im just interested in what you think about this.

"Atheists are never content to just state the obvious or their views (whichever come first) and let it go at that"

Well this seems pretty obvious to me and im stating it the way it looks.

Personally i agree with Lee you seem to be running around in a big flap like a chicken with its head cut off,steaming away in anger like some old relic steam engine running out of gas!and as if you are some (special authority) on matters or something.Trying to decide for (everyone) just how the bible should or should not be looked at etc.

If the way Lee has been approaching it with the computer based data flow models is no good .It sure seems to get you running around all up in arms fuming in a big flap for some reason.

Why the NEED to get so upset if its as silly as you seem to suggest it is ?.

You yourself could "just state the obvious or their views (whichever come first) and let it go at that" too couldnt you ?.

In my opinion it seems to me that if any ones is acting childish here , its actually you .

A) I first learned about IDQ, it was from Lee. Am I not correct in saying, Lee, that you list reliability as a criterion for IDQ? If so, what's your definition of reliability?

B) My position is that there absolutely is something to compare the Bible to. It's the Holy Spirit within me. If you down have Him, that's "too bad", but as I have said before the Bible is not for non-believers.

Hi Jeff,1. I don't think I did list reliability as an IDQ dimension, but If I did it was not when I had a reference in front of me. Reliability is derived from the other twenty or so dimension. I can't find them anywhere that will allow me to cut and paste them so i haven't got a text version. I am typing one up right now using Data Quality AssessmentLeo L. Pipino, Yang W. Lee, and Richard Y. Wang, 2002as a reference, which has a link in the recommended reading for this article. I'll post it in here prior to using it in an upcoming article so they can get out there for discussion.

but honestly, if you want to debate IDQ, don't take my word for it. Read the info for yourself or don't debate it. You're going to lose, not because I have skills, but because you won't know what you are talking about.

2. I am treating the bible as if it represented real world states, just like a resume, or user profile, or a biography, or an aviation safety report. If it represents real world states, such as God Exists, the Holy spirit is interacting with you, angels, prayer, Jesus was God, etc, there is an overlap between "them" and "us", and we can guage each instance by comparing each instance to each other and what we know about similar things. Its a tried and true method of reducing uncertainty, aka knowing.

So if the bible is for believers, how does one get to be a believer? Taking your word for it? Just taking someones word for something is a poor principle Jeff and you should know that being a chemical engineer and all.

Honestly, If we were working together, knowing what I know now, I'd be worried about safety and poor outcomes around you. In fact, I prefer not to work with people I know to be "hard core" christians because they are loaded with untempered cognitive biases.

I find them to be quick to place blame (because its easier to believe someone is incompetent than they are the victim of bad luck), make hasty decisions, and disregard data to the contrary. If they can't believe it, then it ain't so. Fortunately, I work in a data-driven field where stinking thinking like that gets weeded out early in the game.

So, back to our regularly scheduled program...To say that I should take your word over a muslims about what are accurate facts about god is, I"m sorry to say, arrogant.

How can I confirm what you are telling me?

I was christian for over 35 years and I realized that the holy spirit was no different than any other type of inspiration. In fact there were time when I was sure my decisions were based on an inner knowing, then they did not have good outcomes, and I thought OOOPs it was just me and my ego!!!!!but damn, that sure did seem like all the other times I was sure about the information from my inner knowing and I had a successful outcome.

they were all me baby. I got credit for the failures and I should get credit for the successes.

I just want to mention for the record that I have only just scratched the surface of IDQ assessment. So far I have only covered the five information design flaws. I haven't even gotten to the assessment of the information that contains those flaws yet.

as I mentioned, I'll post the next phase of the IDQ topic, the data quality dimensions, after I get them typed up.The next phase is how to use the dimensions in calculation of "ratings". then I guess a subsequent phase would be comparing it to other sources of information,and maybe a phase where we take the ratings and do a bayesian statistical inference and maybe I can figure out how to use a bayesian (or belief) network on the variables and their probabilistic relationship between the bible and real world states, like the medical field does for diseases and symptoms.

which symptoms ("biblical records") represents the disease ("real world states")?

Arranged by my estimation of relative importance regarding assessment of The Bible.* Free-of-error: The extent to which data is correct and reliable

* Security: The extent to which access to data is restricted appropriately to maintain its security.

* Believability: The extent to which data is regarded as true and credible. True meaning that it is an accurate representation of the real world.

* Appropriate Amount of Data: The extent to which the volume of data is appropriate for the task at hand.

* Completeness: The extent to which data is not missing and is of sufficient breadth and depth fo the task at hand.

* Interpretability: The extent to which data is in appropriate language, symbols, and units and the definitions are clear.

* Understandability: The extent to which data is easily comprehended.

* Objectivity: The extent to which data is unbiased, unprejudiced, and impartial

* Timeliness: The extent to which the data is sufficiently up-to-date for the task at hand.

===============================In my view, the following dimensions depend on subjectivity, harder to quantify, and will probably have a higher score than the upper portion.* Reputation: The extend to which data is highly regarded in terms of its source or content.

* Relevancy: The extent to which data is applicable and helpful for the task at hand.

* Value-added: The extent to which data is beneficial and provides advantages from its use.

* Ease of Manipulation: The extent to which data is easy to manipulate and apply to different tasks.

-------------------------In my View, the following are less applicable and probably won't figure in.* Accessibility: The extent to which data is available: or easily and quickly retrievable

* Consistent Representation: The extent to which data is presented in the same format

* Concise Representation: The extent to which data is compactly represented

Well, good morning Lee,I kind of went on a hiatus for awhile, so now that I am working my way back into this, it is taking a long time to catch back up. Just to start a little here, on page 7 of you're link to the wandwang page, there is a table of dimensions and it lists reliability as one of the IDQ dimensions. It would appear then that rather than being derived from the other dimensions, it has its own place in IDQ.

the wandwang page, there is a table of dimensions and it lists reliability as one of the IDQ dimensions.Not exactly. That is old information from '96. The paper from 2002 that i linked to in my comment listing the dimensions are current and are listed like that in the book "Journey to Data Quality" which is the amalgum of those three papers and other research. The evolving state of the research and the lack of free authoritative information is what prompted me to buy the book and find out what they settled on.

The links are ordered by age, with the oldest at the top. Maybe I should reverse them?

It seems that now Reliability is seen to be derived from the dimension of "free-of-error".

You should see the early papers, there are hundreds of dimensions. If you're interested I could probably find that link and add it to the comments.

The book I'm reading now is called "how to measure anything" and i'm using it as a supplement to the IDQ information. The books make a good pair. Its where I got the idea for the comparison of the values of the bible to aircraft maintenance reports.

In business, now its a commonly accepted principle that data is a commodity, it should be percieved as a product, it is inherently valuable, and the value is measurable as is the quality. And generally speaking the more accurate the information, the higher the quality, and the higher the value.

Hi lee,The links are ordered by age, with the oldest at the top. Maybe I should reverse them?

Maybe for the casual reader that might save you a long response to clarify something like you just did. :)The interest in learing IDQ to me is to follow your articles and be able to respond intelligently. older links might be useful but I would tend to look at the most current information, once again to avoid not catching changes like the one I missed. :)It makes sense to have reliability derived in that way because the more errors you have the less reliable the data is. Having said that, it comes as no surprise that there are thousands of different christian denominations. They come at the consumer end of the bible and are about as plentiful as the number of ways to interpret any given passage in the bible. Could yo uimagine trying to get a bunch of different denominations of just Christianity to agree on something? It would probably look like alot of the post on this blog!In my work I have to deal with what I would call fear driven data. The worst kind in my mind. I have to take a machine that is not running and make it work again as fast as I can, no production, no money. So people have a fear of reprocussions if they cause down time. this fear makes my part of the job much harder simply because no one is willing to be honesdt about what happened to stop production. The information I get from some operators is almost useless. Since I don't have a way to triangulate with another opereator, there's only one, I end up doing alot of guessing. It can even be more frustrating when the schematics don't match up to what I can physically see inside a machine. I think this is somewhat related in how dificult it is to know which church is close to being right, if any are at all.I must have taken too long of a break because I am sure I had a point to make in all this but it moved on without me and I can't seem to find it. ( you wouldn't think something a large as a train of thought could get lost, but I sure do it a lot).Anyway I got my eye on you and your IDQ. I am still chugging through all that reading, and I'll try and keep up once I get caught up;)

Poor quality data can be used to make a living with. Its called Fraud. Information can be presented in such a way as to be persuasive whether it accurately represents real world states or not.

Maybe I'm missing something but doesn't this actually go back to intent? Isn't fraud misrepresenting data? So that you are using data for a purpose that it was not intended for. The only way to know that is to be able to determine the intent of the data.

Hi Rich,it sounds like you could benefit from those two books. consider it skill building for your job.anywayintent is important but you can assess data quality using the methods regardless.

I'm sure some psychics, and pentecostals are quite honest about the fact they believe what is going on is real with no intent to fraud.

but that gets into universal morality field. Are they doing wrong if they don't intend to do wrong and should they be held accountable? my position is the same as with serial killers, get them off the street and find out what the malfunction is and if its repairable.

anyway, So that you are using data for a purpose that it was not intended for.that may be true. consider this, if you can't know what the intent was and you are using the information anyway, then it reduces the quality rating.

But I caution you to think in terms of pass or fail. Its not pass or fail. I am aware that when I assess a random part of the bible, it might actually turn out to get a rating equal to a cnn article. Thats fine, I'm doing a hypothesis test that 1. the bible is folklore2. that the quality of information is poor in the bible

It could be that using IDQ, the Bible comes out being relatively good quality and it blows up in my face. but it looks like all the christians up to this point don't believe thats going to be the case or they'd try to turn the tables on me. If they realized they could that is.

and about the principle of IDQ. They are just a refinement of our intuition about data and information that DOESN'T threaten our comfort or survival.

heres a silly example off the top of my head.I presume that If I challenged your method of making making "real" mexican food, you would't care as much as if I challenged your religion. In fact after showing you several authentic mexican recipes I'd say you have good chance of modifying your recipe (assuming you liked the original recipes).

But I doubt you'd ever convert to islam (assuming you liked it). ;-)

But I doubt most christians are going to see the poor IDQ ratings that I expect to get and be convinced. they are just going to keep saying I've misapplied it and its not relevant.

I'm sure thats going to be central strategy; that its not relevant. then we are going to have the same nay-saying dialog that we get about everything else.

I'd say we adjusted these two dimensions* Consistent Representation: The extent to which data is presented in the same format* Accessibility: The extent to which data is available: or easily and quickly retrievable

I've seen Christians criticized on this blog for following a book that forces them to be uniform in their thinking. It seems as if you need to pcik your position. Either we are blindly following a book that forces us into a mold, or we are thinking for ourselves when we read that book and doing the best we can.

While you are reading up on Christian doctrine, please also read on the noetic effects of sin (Place to start: http://www.theopedia.com/Noetic_effects_of_sin). We are all limited in our ability to understand truth because our intellects are affected by our sin nature.

Also, in John 3, Jesus did a pretty good job of following up His comments with explanations.

Besides, Jesus did not claim to speak plainly for all (Matthew 13:13). He is not obligated to speak plainly to anyone. That He does is all of grace.

Hi Jk,thanks for the thoughtful comment. Either we are blindly following a book that forces us into a mold, or we are thinking for ourselves when we read that book and doing the best we can.

Thats not what is going on.what is going on is Chrsitianity is an organization whose goal is to produce christians. It is divided up into departments that can't agree between themselves on the most effective way to do that and the stats show the result which is only 30% mindshare over 2000 years.

Compare that with the pythagorean theorem, or vaccinations, or any other modern practice developed over the past 2000 years and you might recognize the problem.

The problem is not that you don't all walk and talk the same way, the problem is that your organization needs to agree on how the best way to go about creating christians is and increase your productivity.

If you really have the support of an omniscient and all powerful being, then it I don't think it should be as hard as convincing people that vaccinations is a good way to minimize suffering from small pox, or that committing resources to finding a cure for cancer is a good idea.

Your problem is that you suffer from lack of persuasive evidential arguments. There is evidence that the course of history can be changed by good solid evidential arguments and that you can get the majority of the world to go along with a good idea.

I think I can say that only people that don't think that committing resources to cancer research is a good idea are those that don't understand the problem, and fortunately those people are few and far between.